Have you read any interesting (or maybe not so interesting...) linguistically related books, essays or articles lately, that you think the world ought to know about? Then this thread is for you.

I've recently read an essay on colour terminology: The Hungarian colour terms piros and vörös: A corpus and cognitive linguistic investigation (Those who are completely new to this can consult Wikipedia for an introduction.) Among other things, the essay - which is written from a perspective of cognitive linguistic - puts into question the status of vörös as a basic colour term in Hungarian. Though vörös has a rather high token frequency, it has a more limited type frequency than piros; furthermore, many of its occurrences are in lexicalised expressions, and it has limited productivity.

(I think it's clear we need another moderator who is able to take care of some of the things Ossicone no longer has the time for. She's pretty great at the job when she is able, but there's been pretty long stretches where she has been, essentially, nonexistent.)

I've been reading The typology and semantics of locative predicates: posturals, positionals, and other beasts by Ameka and Levinson. It makes me want to create so many languages. Also Hagmans Khoekhoegowab grammar, which is not as interesting as the language she is describing. I'm obviously still writing on my assignment.

I got the book closer to the beginning of the year, but I've really only felt like I had the time to read it within the past few weeks. I finished reading up to the end of first section (phonology) of the first half of the book a few days ago, and I'm looking forward to having more time to read on soon. I think I can already tell why the book is so "popular", at least relatively/among certain groups of people who share certain interests and hobbies. I've considered sketching out the beginnings of a North American-esque conlang as I progress through the book, but I don't know for sure if I'll end up doing that or not yet.

shimobaatar wrote:The Languages of Native North America by Marianne Mithun

I got the book closer to the beginning of the year, but I've really only felt like I had the time to read it within the past few weeks. I finished reading up to the end of first section (phonology) of the first half of the book a few days ago, and I'm looking forward to having more time to read on soon. I think I can already tell why the book is so "popular", at least relatively/among certain groups of people who share certain interests and hobbies. I've considered sketching out the beginnings of a North American-esque conlang as I progress through the book, but I don't know for sure if I'll end up doing that or not yet.

What will the conlang look like in terms of phonology and romanization. Also, I have seen inside that book at a library and I am thinking of making a Siouan inspired language with the velarized l with interdental voiced non sibilant fricative release.

Basic Linguistic Theory by RMW Dixon (the first two were on sale so I picked up all three). Whoa is chapter 3 (overview of everything to come), book I loong, but now I'm done.

Chapter 3 was so long I read chapter 8, "Lexicon" in between sub-chapters. In it, he says (examples made up):

1. Avoid circular definitions, by defining more specialized meaning through more generalized meanings (like: <balan> "hit with stick" may have <guma> "hit" in its definition, but "hit" should not have "hit with stick" in its own definition)
2. Thesauruses always beats dictionaries. Words with similar meanings should be close together, for easy comparison, instead of having to have one finger on the G's for <guma> and another on the Bs for <balan>. By all means have an alphabetized index/way to find words, but don't organize your lexicon that way!

Considering that I angsted a lot when making my first conlang for not having enough words starting with <o> I think it was , and also not knowing enough phonology so that *all* sounds needed to have their own entry in the dictionary... I still get angsty when I notice a section of the dictionary with only a handful entries... but you can't really spot what meanings you are missing when you just alphabetize.

Birdlang wrote:What will the conlang look like in terms of phonology and romanization. Also, I have seen inside that book at a library and I am thinking of making a Siouan inspired language with the velarized l with interdental voiced non sibilant fricative release.

I'm honestly not sure at the moment, but if that changes, I'll most likely post the phonology over in the "Random phonology/phonemic inventory thread" with a link to one of my posts over here. Thank you for your interest, and best of luck with your Siouan-inspired idea!

Ahzoh wrote:All I've been reading is the Unfolding of Language...

Who's the author? I think I might have the book.
Also, many thanks to everyone who's posted in this thread for making me aware of some things I'd like to read in the future!

I've been reading over A Comparative Germanic Grammar by E. Prokosch, but not very actively. The last linguistic thing I've read as a whole was a paper about Swiss German consonants. Turns out Fortis-Lenis is... gemination. At least in many dialects it is. Mine seems to agree with that theory.